We are very happy to share that our fellow Nicholas Hlobo is participating in a group exhibition Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, at Barbican Centre, in London, United Kingdom


Textiles are vital to our lives. We are swaddled in them when we’re born, we wrap our bodies in them every day, and we’re shrouded in them when we die. What does it mean to imagine a needle, a loom or a garment as a tool of resistance? How can textiles unpack, question, unspool, unravel and therefore reimagine the world around us?

Bout Nicholas Hlobo work:
‘Babelana ngentloko’, 2017, Ribbon and leather on linen canvas, Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul and London.

Hlobo takes on the loaded history of painting in his series of canvases that incorporate ribbon and leather. These works defy categorisation: the artist calls them ‘paintings’ but sees himself as a sculptor, and stitching is the key technique that runs through his practice. Here he uses ribbon to suggest two intertwined bodies. They evoke tentacled watery beings, or even sexual organs that transgress any binary codes. For Hlobo, the negative and ‘craft’ associations of textile are exactly what drew him to it, for its rebellious possibilities. His choice of ribbon is deliberate in its historical associations with women’s garments.

These works have been key to Hlobo’s exploration of his own sexuality as a gay man of Xhosa heritage in South Africa. He describes how stitching represents ‘what South Africans are going through, constant revision’, and the suture of the stitch refers both to the pain of colonisation and the possibility of
healing after this suffering. If you would like to feel the texture of the materials used in this artwork, please ask the member of staff in the room ‘Wound and Repair’, who will share a sample with you.

You can see the exhibition from 13 February to 26 May, 2024.

More info

Exhibition guide

Large print guide